


A Much Better Death

by figsoclock



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, M/M, Newt dies AU, One Shot, Post-Movie, ish?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:32:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6529450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/figsoclock/pseuds/figsoclock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt dies. Hermann doesn't cry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Much Better Death

Newt dies.

 

 

-

 

 

He supposes it was all very anticlimactic; a car crash, of all things. How _trivial_ (a clear night, driving back from a lecture, on an adrenaline high from the children’s awe and wonder), how _pedestrian_ (bickering as always, Newton laughing uproariously as Hermann shoots an acidic statement that has long since lost its malice), how _utterly mundane_ (the lights out of nowhere, the screeching of tires, the sickening crunch he never thought he’d hear again, not after the kaiju years ago that almost stepped on him like he was an insignificance, an ant).

 

Before the kaiju, he scoffed at cliche phrases like “your life flashing before your eyes,” thinking they were exaggerations, hardly close to the truth.

 

As he stares at the glare from the light on the glass of the coffin, he wishes he never knew the meaning of “in the blink of an eye,” either.

 

 

-

 

 

Newton was driving.

 

Both drivers were drunk, but only one of them was drunk on alcohol.

 

It wasn’t Newton. Hermann would have known.

 

 

He could feel the head of his cane creak under his hand in the wakeful silence.

 

 

-

 

 

He wonders idly how delicate the mortician’s hands must have been, to bring some semblance of peace to Newton’s face. When Hermann had struggled to look to his right, Newton’s face had appeared almost comical in its frozen contortion between shock and worry.

 

 

(Of course, that wasn’t the only thing contorted about him.)

 

 

Hermann doesn’t even know what Newt was worried about. It was far too short a time to be worried, let alone to realize there was a reason to worry. (That’s a lie. He knows perfectly well who Newt was worried about.

The idiot.)

 

  
  
-

 

  
  
They told him Dr. Geiszler had died almost instantly, that he didn’t feel any pain.  
  
Hermann thinks of scalpels glistening with neon blue, of the most abrasive, loudest music, of needles and ink scratching repeatedly on skin.  
  
He thinks of helmets, of the jarring electric drive into one’s skull, of a knife up his nose ( _nothisnothisnothis_ ), of the starburst of blood on one eye.  
  
He thinks: _you do not understand_. He thinks: _you bumbling idiot_. He thinks: _that is not what I am bothered about_.  
  
He says: “Good.”

 

  
  
-

 

  
  
Hermann tries very hard to be a person who is not much for showing sentiment.  
  
As they start to lay the wooden coffin down into the ground, he wishes, with the direst yearning, that an explosion had at least happened. Never mind the impossibility of its physics; after everything Dr. Newton Geiszler had done ( _had been–-_ and it’s _had_ now), he deserved a much better death.

  
  
( _And Hermann wishes that in all the time they had traded insults, he had thought to tell Newt that._ )

 

  
  
-

 

  
  
Hermann doesn’t cry.

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr 3 years ago; rediscovered it now, and I still like it, so I'm putting it on here. Here is the link to the xposted tumblr post: http://bangskeletariat.tumblr.com/post/63377611433/drabble-inspired-by-this-newt-dies-more


End file.
